The Uniqueness of Israel’s Religion
Missions 101:
The Uniqueness of Israel’s Religion
INTRODUCTION:
When we evangelize, we are sharing a unique message. This is because the church of Christ is unique. We are not sharing a message that entices men and women to join the church of their choice, a church patterned after an “all you can eat” buffet mentality. We recognize “church” is not about ourselves; it’s about God. The church of Christ is about the Gospel of Christ and following the pattern of Christ for His church. When we moved to Romania, we did not carry a man-made name for the church; nor did we carry man-made worship practices; nor a man-made plan of salvation.
Uniqueness is the hallmark of the God’s religions - both the Jewish faith in the OT and the Christian faith in the NT. Tonight, I particularly want to focus on the uniqueness of the Israelite faith as it sets the tone and lays the foundation for the uniqueness of the Christian faith.
THE UNIQUENESS OF ISRAEL’S RELIGION:
Genesis 3:15 -
When God called Abraham out of the world of heathenism in Genesis 12, He focused His plan into one family in order to bring sin to an end and unfold a plan characterized by grace which would lead to the salvation of man through Jesus Christ to God’s glory. This religion that would concentrate on the family of Abraham would be a ray of hope and light in a dark world.
1. The beginning of the Israelite religion is based on the supernatural act and revelation of God. “In the beginning, God…” Not only did God “create” in the beginning, but God “acted” in the beginning, and God “spoke” in the beginning. Abraham did not seek out God; God sought Abraham. Abraham’s family and people in Ur of Chaldea, as far as we know (Josh. 24:2) were pagans. Then God broke the silence as He spoke to Abraham.
We know why God called Abraham. In Genesis 18:19, He says, “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” God could see down through the corridors of time and He knew that Abraham would teach his son Isaac, who would teach his son Jacob, who would teach his twelve sons about Jehovah God. By His grace, God called Abraham to leave the familiar and go to a land that was unfamiliar and have a new beginning.
The Israelite religion is not the result of cultural development. It is not the result of some great enlightenment. It is not the result of ethnic or cultural evolution. It is not the result of someone looking for God. It is not the result of adaption of different positive aspects of other religions. It is not the result of a religious genius.
The Israelite religion is the result of a supernatural act and a supernatural revelation of Jehovah God that began with the call to an otherwise unknown man named Abraham who lived in Ur of Chaldea two thousand years before Christianity began. So the Israelite religion has an origin that is divinely, historically, personally, and geographically focused. It is not myth nor legend. It is history.
To borrow words of the apostle John relative to Jesus but applicable to the new religion of Abraham: this religion was not “born… of blood [racially] nor of the will of the flesh [socioloigcally] nor of the will of man [psycholgoically], but of God [theologically]” (John 1:13).
2. The call of Abraham was a decisive turning point in the history of mankind and the history of religions. Man’s religions come and go. They become more civilized and then less civilized. Man’s religions are unstable and react to the worst impulses in men’s hearts. There is no biblical references to man’s idolatry in the first 11 chapters of Genesis (the Tower of Babel is in chapter 11). But between chapter 11 and chapter 12, we know from archaeology and such texts as Joshua 24:2 that mankind fell deep and hopelessly into self-made religion.
Idolatry proliferated throughout man’s history as we see early in the history of the patriarchs (Gen. 31:19, 32, 34), which Jacob commanded his family to bury and get rid of (Gen. 35:2, 4).
The longer God allowed man to proceed on his own, the further removed man got from God’s basic requirements, as we see from Romans 1:18-32. To make God like man or like anything else created on earth is idolatry. Eventually God would give mankind an image of Himself, in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:3). If Jesus were not more than a mortal man, He would be an idol. Paul points out in Romans 1 that this behavior by mankind called forth the wrath of God.
But in the call of Abraham, we have evidenced the grace of God. God was not content to allow mankind to fall so far from His grace and bury themselves in their idolatry, their superstitions, their false religions. God had to act. He had to speak. No one would listen. But Abraham did. At the Tower of Babel, mankind decided that they could act in unison and make a name for themselves as they built a tower to reach heaven. So God had to separate. He had to make a separation. Division is not all bad.
But the division was the work of God. It was His will…
a. God calls for a particular approach to Him, dare we say an exclusive approach to Him. When God calls Abraham, He is limiting His unique revelation to a unique family, the nation of Israel. The family of Abraham, the nation of Israel, takes its own unique course, its own unique path because it is guided directly by Jehovah God. He is watching over it and enriching it in many ways. Consider Deuteronomy 9:4-5.
b. God calls for a people to stand between Him and the world. Israel is to be that mediator. In Exodus 19:4-6, she was called to be a kingdom of “priests,” a holy nation, to mediate the unique revelation of God which she was receiving. The apostle Paul makes this point most clearly when he writes in Romans 10:4 that Christ is the “end / goal” of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Israel, as the incubator for the Messianic seed, was the mediator of that blessing.
3. In calling Abraham, God marks a new stage of human history which creates a new moral consciousness and a new religious consciousness. God’s religion as He began it with Abraham was a break with the old, a break with the evils of man’s heart. God set out moral ideals in the Law given to Abraham’s family and religious ideals that were absolute.
Look at what man had done with himself:
Sin entered into human history (Gen. 3).
The first sin outside the garden of Eden reveals itself in the religious life of mankind and specifically in the worship service (Gen. 4). The sacrifice of Cain typifies the self-styled religion of man who is not guided by the word of God. It is, in the words of Paul, “self-made religion” (Colossians 2:23). The heathen religion of the Polynesians illustrates this viewpoint in more modern times and is typified by King Kamehameha when he wrote in 1816: “These are our gods, whom I worship; whether I do right or wrong, I do not know; but I follow my faith, which cannot be wicked, as it commands me never to do wrong.” So mankind’s faith leads him to do what he wants to do. That mentality did not die in the 19th century nor is it limited to cultures like the Polynesians.
This all has its origin in inadequate views of God because these lead to inadequate views of man, sin, and worship. In the days of Cain and Abel, when mankind got worship wrong, he also got his morality messed up. Brutality quickly followed when Cain killed Abel. The descendants of Cain, following his lust for pride, degenerated into a culture that promoted polygamy and blood-revenge.
Violence among mankind reached its zenith in the days prior to the flood of Noah’s day (Gen. 6-7). Among the lessons Noah teaches us is that when one sows to the flesh, he will reap destruction. That’s why mankind needs God’s religion.
Sin was revived in the new paradise, the new pristine world when Noah fell prey to a lack of self-control. Noah’s intoxication led to public nudity, a behavior which the Law of Moses will take special pains to separate from God’s religion.
Sin is culminated in the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11). Mankind directly rebelled against God’s command to go into all the world and populate the earth. The desire to be one’s own master, one’s own “god,” has never left man.
It is with this backdrop of human depravity that God steps in, calls Abraham, and begins preparing the nation of Israel for the coming of salvation through Jesus Christ. To accomplish this, God through the Law of Moses and His prophets has a relentless protest against the prevailing religions of mankind and the immorality that always accompanies false religious beliefs. The Law of Moses is relentless in its attach against divination, soothsaying, witchcraft in every form, against idolatry and false teachers in every form.
God has judged and condemned sin in all its forms so that mankind can realize he is a sinner and the wages of sin is death and mankind is helpless and hopeless without God.
So on the positive side, God also, through the Law, reiterates what His expectations are, both morally and religiously. God wants Israel to be morally sensitive to God’s expectations so that she will not fall into the same moral rot and decay that the Gentiles fell. And also, to create a positive morally upright life and religious expectations so that Israel could lead a decent life and know the salvation that God wanted to make a reality for all mankind.
So:
1. The Law of Moses which was exemplified in the Ten Commandments, declared God’s ideals for Israel’s moral, social, and religious life. The Law is absolutely unique among all man’s early religious documents in its moral and spiritual grandeur, glory, and severity.
2. God established strict and exclusive control over His people so they could live disciplined lives.
3. This control included penalties, sometimes severe, for every breach of the covenant.
4. God called individuals of faith who took a strong stand for God’s moral and religious ideals, beginning with Moses and then Joshua, certain of the judges, and eventually the prophets and the “sons of the prophets.”
5. God’s Law also established certain institutions like the sacrifice of animals and the work of the priests which Israel was to observe and obey even if they did not fully understand the theology behind it all.
6. This sacrificial system atoned for the sins of Israel, kept the way to God open, taught Israel to live a separate life completely devoted to God and to worship Him in a pure, upright, and dignified manner. Every aspect of Israel’s religious life tested her loyalty, devotion, and obedience to God.
THE NEW COVENANT OF JESUS CHRIST:
Why do we need to evangelize? Why do we need to do mission work? Because the nature of the church and the nature of the New Covenant is the same nature as the Law God gave to the family of Abraham.
It is exclusive.
It is under the divine authority of Jesus Christ.
It demands a morally pure life.
It requires worship that is pure and unadulterated with the will and whim of mankind.
There is only one path to heaven - the path of Jesus Christ and His teachings. That’s why we need to evangelize and send missionaries.
Take home message: Don't let the noise of self-made religion drown out the true message of Jesus Christ. It's time to evangelize and save souls.